The role of today’s “contract manager” continues to change. How and why it is doing so depends on one’s perspective, but from the private to public sector it is converging.

At the federal level, contract managers develop and manage contract vehicles between both parties; interpret and implement the myriad laws and regulations required for inclusion; provide sound business advice in the execution of pre-award and post-award functions, use a wide range of common contracting methods and contract types; develop and/or review complex pricing arrangements; conduct meetings with contractors on sensitive and/or acquisition-related issues as an authoritative contractual representative when warranted; assist in the procurement of standard or specialized services, commodities and/or construction within a contracting office;execute and track deliverables until final contract closeout, etc. This traditional “cradle to grave” responsibility is (to the extent it wasn’t already) a growing role at the state and local public procurement level as well.

Some government organizations, or the contract managers themselves, view their role as compliance and process enforcement, while others see it as much more. However, in going beyond traditional roles, should contract manager involvement start much earlier and be more comprehensive, including requirements definition, acquisition strategy and planning, spend analysis, source selection, supply chain management, project management, and the external relationships from beginning to end?

While not totally accurate and complete enough to speak definitively, fiscal year data is generally solid enough to permit the drawing of conclusions.

As such, several speculative conclusions can be made based on fiscal 2015 government contracting data.

Unfortunately, the outlook is not positive — for the most part. Recent negative trends in government contract spending and opportunities continue, declining last year (to no one’s surprise) another 1 percent. This may not seem like much, but it represents another $6 billion drop in potential contracting obligations, according to the National Contract Management Association’s 2016 annual review of government contracting.

However, many believe this to be the low point, with increases likely to occur during the 2016 fiscal year.

The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) recently issued a statement on the “Top 10 Focus Areas for State Procurement,” which caused us to think about the unique set of challenges the public sector faces when it comes to procurement.

The public sector is under a constant mandate to reduce costs, optimize contracts, and spend intelligently and transparently. So technology solutions that enable best practices in spend management must deliver rapid time-to-value.

The public sector also faces the obstacles of dealing with multiple agencies, districts and departments, an abundance of data from multiple sources and the need to choose suppliers carefully. While these challenges are not necessarily unique to the public sector, the private sector doesn’t also have to maintain a high level of transparency and reporting on what is being spent across state and local governments.

The NASPO statement reinforces this idea of data transparency. In fact, NASPO named “Spend Analytics and Greater Procurement Oversight and Efficiency” as its second priority for state governments in 2015.

Although NASA developed a strategic sourcing procurement plan, it failed to analyze and track spending through the program, meaning the space agency can’t determine its efficiency, a Jan. 15 NASA inspector general report says.

NASA annually spends about 80 percent of its $17 billion budget on acquiring products and services, the report says.

One of the first steps in NASA’s strategic sourcing program requires a spend analysis to identify potential candidates for strategic sourcing, the IG says.

But NASA only performed targeted spend analyses for a small number of commodities, the report says. It didn’t conduct analyses for the majority of commodities acquired by the agency.